True Life: I Work in the Sex Industry

Universal via Everett Collection
Every movie I saw in 2013, ranked from worst to best:
112. IDENTITY THIEFThe first comedy movie to not make me laugh once.
111. SAVING MR. BANKSInsulting, manipulative, dishonest, and unkind, with occasional song breaks.
110. SCARY MOVIE 5These movies have gotten much worse since we were 13.
109. GETAWAYINT. RACECAR. NIGHT. Ethan Hawke and Selena Gomez crash into stuff.
108. GROWN UPS 2So much vomiting, so many homophobic jokes, so little plot.
107. I GIVE IT A YEARAn ugly, loveless rom-com that isn't clever enough to be satire.
106. DEAD MAN DOWNAll I remember is a whole lot of dark alleyways.
105. A GLIMPSE INSIDE THE MIND OF CHARLES SWAN IIIThe best part is the closing credits (I'm not being flip, they're actually kind of fun).
104. MOVIE 43Bad offensive joke after bad offensive joke after bad offensive joke...
103. WINNIE MANDELADesperately important story turned into a desperately dull movie.
102. TWICE BORNNo summary available due to lack of anything interesting happening in this movie.
101. R.I.P.D.Somebody forgot to give Ryan Reynolds any jokes.
New Line Cinema via Everett Collection
100. THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONEThis movie could have been funny if Wonderstone wasn't such a d**k.
99. ONLY GOD FORGIVESInteresting in the moments when it's not shoving its unpleasantness down your throat.
98. MAN OF STEELSetup: cerebral reinvention of Superman. Payoff: mass property damage.
97. CARRIEBeat-by-beat remake without any of the original's spirit.
96. THE TO DO LISTUncomfortably raunchy and mean. Thank God for Bill Hader.
95. KICK-ASS 2More Mean Girls shtick would have benefited this weak sequel.
94. PHANTOMI'm not sure this was actually a finished movie.
93. WRONGObnoxiously nonsensical, but not without its share of laughs.
92. THE SMURFS 2Mostly cloying, but Neil Patrick Harris is incurably watchable.
91. HANSEL &amp; GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS Dumb.
90. JOBSBoring.
89. NOW YOU SEE MEPossibly the worst ending in a 2013 movie, but a few bits of fun along the way.
88. WE'RE THE MILLERS[Pop culture reference]
87. RED 2John Malkovich's facial contortions save this from total failure.
86. STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS It hsa a few pros, but is mostly one giant... well, you know.
85. RIDDICKSurprisingly intriguing, when it isn't being deplorably sexist.
84. FREE BIRDSEh, turkeys are kinda funny.
83. PRISONERS Thankfully, scenes of Hugh Jackman yelling are intercut with the far superior scenes of Jake Gyllenhaal yelling.
82. WHITE REINDEER Any minute now, this movie is going to reveal its inner glory! Any minute now!
81. EVIL DEAD A better horror flick than the original! But still mostly forgettable.
Vertical Entertainment
80. GBFMostly charming, undone by its "safe" and "classy" ending.
79. THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALISTIt's kind of hard to get past how boring the title is.
78. DESPICABLE ME 2 Lots of minions. People like minions, right?
77. JOHN DIES AT THE END Not nearly as weird as it thinks it is or wants to be.
76. 2 GUNSHey, wait a minute, this movie is kinda funny! ... Not that funny, but kinda.
75. SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES MEI like to call this movie Click Offerman.
74. WHITE HOUSE DOWNWould be more fun if we were ready to laugh about terrorism.
73. AT ANY PRICEBoooriii— HOLY S**T WHERE THE F**K DID THAT COME FROM?!
72. BAD MILONot quite up to par with your expectations for the "Ken Marino has a demon in his butt" synopsis.
71. MONSTERS UNIVERSITYLackluster prequel, nice to look at, big band music.
70. THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES In its audacity, this silly amalgam of YA tropes can actually be a lot of fun.
69. THE CONJURING Fascinating subplots about the exorcism industry would be better served at the head of the film.
68. PEEPLESThere's a joke about wristwatches that I still think about.
67. SIDE EFFECTSSoderbergh's farewell caper doesn't have as much fun as its loony plot would demand.
66. ELYSIUMBroad and clumsy, but how wrong can you go with Bald Matt Damon?
65. OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFULIt works with Dark Side of the Moon.
64. THE COUNSELORThe book was better. Wait, this wasn't a book? Well it should have been.
63. IN A WORLD...A fun, biting look at an unappreciated industry! ... until it dissolves into mild genericism.
62. THE LONE RANGER Oh come on, you didn't love the William Tell climax?
61. THE WOLVERINENot always engaging, but at least it's about something.
Summit Entertainment via Everett Collection
60. WARM BODIESNot really about anything, but at least it's engaging.
59. THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWNUndeniably powerful, but feels like it could use a few more revisions.
58. ENDER'S GAMESpace Camp: The Movie! (Slightly less expensive than actual space camp.)
57. PACIFIC RIMMonsters vs. robots aside, there's a riveting world constructed in the backdrop of this sci-fi epic.
56. ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUESThe battle royale does not disappoint.
55. YOU'RE NEXTThe fun, swift hook isn't nearly as interesting as the great character work that it replaces.
54. THE WAY WAY BACKI, too, long to get life advice from a waterpark-dwelling Sam Rockwell.
53. SOME VELVET MORNINGEven if you see the twist coming, the chemistry here is impeccable.
52. THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIREShut up, Peeta, I'm trying to watch all the good parts of this movie.
51. 20 FEET FROM STARDOMA story that deserves a little more spirit and energy than it is given in this documentary.
50. DON JONNo. 50 on "Best Movies" list, No. 1 on "Best Trailers."
49. THE ROCKETA feel-good kids' adventure substantiated by the gravities of war. Wins in both areas.
48. CRYSTAL FAIRY &amp; THE MAGICAL CACTUS AND 2012Beautifully shot, interestingly written, impressively acted.
47. MUD Yes, we all loved The Goonies, and we all loved David Wooderson, so...
46. CUTIE AND THE BOXER A vivid struggle that is equal parts artistically, martially, and internally based. Engrossing all the way.
45. CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Tom Hanks' best performance in ages in a dramatic thriller that feels real (for obvious reasons).
44. THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG As a Legend of Zelda fan, this movie's world awakened something in me.
43. FRUITVALE STATIONThis character story is at odds with its out-universe goal, but Michael B. Jordan is unforgettable.
42. BEFORE MIDNIGHTI'm still not sure how I feel about that ending, but it was good to catch up wit Jesse and Celine.
41. DARK TOUCHEverything that Carrie could have been. A shocking fantasy about human pains.
Walt Disney Co via Everett Collection
40. THOR: THE DARK WORLDMore Chris O'Dowd.
39. BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLORIntellectually stimulating, but doesn't hit all its emotional marks.
38. THE WORLD'S ENDI've been saying "Gooey Wooey Egg Man" for months.
37. THE GREAT GATSBYLights! Music! Pizzazz! Moxy! The bee's knees! The cat's pajamas!
36. ENOUGH SAIDBest TV drama's male lead + best TV comedy's female lead = quite a charming romantic dramedy.
35. SIGHTSEERSWell, this is rather amusi— HOLY S**T WHERE THE F**K DID THAT COME FROM?!
34. THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINESNot sure if the "three stories" approach makes for the most powerful character work, but it's an enchanting ride.
33. THE WE AND THE I A bus full of inner-city high school kids turns into a magical kingdom thanks to Gondry's dreamy edge.
32. NEWLYWEEDSA love triangle with marijuana as the third party. Weighty, but never overly so, and funny throughout.
31. GRAVITY. . .
30. PRINCE AVALANCHE Heh heh, look at Paul Rudd's mustache.
29. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET Yes, we all loved the 'ludes scene. Very, very much.
28. ALL IS LOSTRobert Redford, you still got that same oomph. You too, ocean.
27. SAVING LINCOLN The weirdest, goofiest, funniest biopic about Abraham Lincoln ever.
26. THE KINGS OF SUMMER Kids run away, live in the woods, grow up, make jokes. Always a charming endeavor.
25. AMERICAN HUSTLE Little more than a cartoon, but an emotionally explosive and riotous one at that.
24. THE HEAT Melissa McCarthy insisting on stepping out of a moving car earns a full five minutes of laughter alone.
23. DRINKING BUDDIESNever dips too low on the emotional spectrum, but stays real and fresh in the face of the rom-com genre.
22. UPSTREAM COLORA difficult, confusing, harrowing thinker.
21. STOKER Somehow both effectively haunting and deliciously fun.
Room 237: the movie/Facebook
20. ROOM 237 Less a doting tribute to The Shining or Kubrick than it is to movie-lovers and their bottomless well of theories.
19. BLUE JASMINE Each party fires on all cylinders in Woody Allen's Streetcar gem, Sally Hawkins especially.
18. S#X ACTSThe sadness of this story of our youth's desperate obsession with and reliance on sex is its authenticity.
17. IRON MAN 3 The first true action comedy in Marvel's line of films shows how much fun superhero movies can really be.
16. ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW Take notes, John Dies at the End. THIS is one weird f**king movie.
15. NEBRASKA Father vs. son, past vs. present, dreams vs. reality. Everything here is touching, funny, and inviting.
14. PAIN &amp; GAIN Michael Bay talks a long, hard look in the mirror with this biting send-up of everything his other movies represent.
13. THIS IS THE ENDFar more interesting and insightful than it will get credit for being, This Is the End uses a literal apocalypse and no dearth of d**k jokes to deconstruct tenets of friendship and social politics.
12. THE ACT OF KILLING While this documentary would benefit from restructuring, the power of its message (especially its final few monents, not to mention the "anonymous"-heavy credits) is painfully resonant.
11. FROZENOffering the magic and whimsy you'll remember from time-honored Disney classics, but so much more in the way of its message, Frozen might very well be the most magnificent and meaningful animated feature yet to spring from Walt's legacy.
10. COMPUTER CHESSIt doesn't have much to say about the human condition (beyond maybe highlighting our propensity for arrogance and self-directed delusion). It doesn't tell a story that'll stick with you for very long. But Computer Chess reigns supreme as, far and away, the funniest movie of 2013.
9. SPRING BREAKERS A dark, wicked, wholly upsetting reflection of the toxic direction in which we might be headed. And James Franco gives a tour-de-force of a performance with his demonic scoutmaster Alien.
8. IT'S A DISASTER An intelligent, meticulously directed farce about group politics and conflicting personal philosophies, executed to near perfection thanks to the rhythmic participation of a more than capable cast.
7. 12 YEARS A SLAVEAn unprecedented masterpiece that sings the traumas not only of Solomon Northrup, a free man captured and sold into slavery, but in his fellow sufferers as well. For my money, the true anchor of the story is in Lupita Nyong'o's Patsey, whose suffering is unlike anything we've seen managed on the big screen in years.
6. HER With so much to say about such tremendous topics, Her manages to still dive so deep into the heart of its story: the pangs of love in the wake of the inevitable fallibilities of romantic relationships. Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson alike give dynamic performances, and Spike Jonze mystifies us with his strange, cold, all-too-familiar world.
A24 via Everett Collection
5. THE SPECTACULAR NOWThis is one of those movies you try to convince yourself to inch out of your top 10, or five, for fear of being seen as juvenile. ButThe Spectacular Now hits such genuine notes with Miles Teller's Sutter, climaxing at a moment where you'll recognize an angst so true to life and so criminally absent from most movies about the journey toward self-love.
IFC Films
4. FRANCES HA Months and months after my first encounter with it, this deceptively simple film sticks in my head, reminding me that its every artful beat is riddled with emotional weight and ironic humor alike. Greta Gerwig and director Noah Baumbach give us the a New York movie to rival Annie Hall, zooming in and out of the perspective of the young women and men who occupy, and drown within, today's version of the biggest, most stupefying city in the world.
CBS Films
3. INSIDE LLEWYN DAVISSadness, coldness, loneliness, failure... such wonderful things when handled by filmmakers like the Coen Brothers. Padding this antithesis of triumph with some of the most beautiful, somber music you'll hear all year, Inside Llewyn Davis makes us fall in love all over again with the very idea of the artistic struggle.
Touchstone Pictures via Everett Collection
2. THE WIND RISESHayao Miyazaki's final movie doesn't pass judgment on its hero, a man so devoted to his work (building weapons) that he neglects his wife, sister, and friends. It doesn't endorse these choices either. Instead, it hones in on the passions of its hero/antihero, challenging us to sympathize with a fellow whose only desire is to do his job while we lament his sacrifices. More even than Gravity does the frequently airborne animated picture induce dizzy spells as we connect with the conglomerate of colorful, intriguing characters in this grim but dainty biography.
Cinedigm via Everett Collection
1. SHORT TERM 12 There are so few flaws to highlight in The Wind Rises, Inside Llewyn Davis, Frances Ha, and the other entries on this top 10 list. What separates Short Term 12 is not a complete lack of error, but in an umatched spirit for the telling of its story. The movie wants us to feel the pains of counselor Grace (Brie Larson) and the disavantaged children for whom she cares, highlighting abused Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) and orphan Marcus (Keith Stanfield). It also wants us to feel the hope that it brings to these characters in their plight to overcome the hands they have been dealt. Every emotion in this movie carries through with such force. For those of us who know any of these trials personally, they ring tremendously true. For others, they work to invite you into this sad but hopeful world. We've been gifted with a ton of exemplary cinematic works this year, but nothing sticks with me more than this tearful, heartrending masterpiece.
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Adult actress Jenna Jameson is returning to the porn industry, five years after declaring she would never strip off on camera again. The busty blonde famously announced she was quitting porn at the Adult Video News Awards in 2008, but financial woes have since prompted her to take up work as a webcam model, undressing and performing sex acts online in exchange for tips, reports TMZ.com.
The 39 year old, who recently lost her Hollywood mansion to foreclosure, tells the website, "My motivation (for signing up for the webcam work) is taking care of my family and having fun and pleasing all of my fans."
Ironically, news of Jameson's return to porn emerges just a day after she appeared in a pre-taped interview on U.S. TV show Oprah: Where Are They Now?, on which she insisted she was not interested in big money offers to reprise her X-rated career, claiming her life has become "100 per cent about being a mother" to her four-year-old twins, Jesse and Journey.
Speaking to Oprah Winfrey on the programme, which aired on Sunday (10Nov13), she added, "I've had a lot of people question me saying, 'Why haven't you made a comeback? It'd be easy for you to make multi-millions off of one or two scenes.' And to be honest, I made a promise to my children when they were in my tummy that there is no way I would ever, ever, ever go back."

Scottish singer Annie Lennox was honoured with the Music Industry Trusts Award for her achievements and charity commitments in London on Monday (04Nov13), and Sir Elton John and Adele were among the celebrities who saluted her. Sir Elton, a previous recipient, could not attend the gala in the former Eurythmics star's honour so he sent in a video message, which was played at the event.
He said Lennox's latest accolade was "so well deserved and not only for your extraordinary contribution to music and songwriting but also for your outstanding and tireless work as an HIV and AIDS activist and supporter of woman's rights."
Archbishop Desmond Tutu was also among those who offered up a film tribute, while Adele offered a written tribute in the gala's programme, offering, "So many of her songs have been the soundtrack to my life. Annie Lennox has been a constant part of my life. An example of a brilliant talent that exudes excellence and influence on everyone."
Lennox, 58, performed at the Grosvenor House Hotel gala and admitted she was "very touched and honoured" to receive the award.
She told the audience, "Music has given me a lifetime of experiences and opportunities that I would never have dreamed possible, and I feel very privileged to have been able to become an artist and communicator, especially as a woman."
The event was hosted by BBC broadcaster Jo Whiley at short notice after colleague Paul Gambaccini withdrew from the gala following his arrest last week (ends01Nov13) as part of the Metropolitan Police's Operation Yewtree sex abuse investigation.

There are some actresses who start out their careers making compromises and showing more than they want to in order to become famous (let's face it: the industry can be pretty male-oriented). Then there are the actresses who are already famous, having starred in popular or critically-acclaimed movies, but decide to go topless anyway. Perhaps they equate nudity with an Oscar nomination, or maybe they just want to flaunt it while they can (these actresses do look like superhumans, after all). Either way, here are seven actresses who could have kept their clothes on, because going nude did absolutely nothing for their careers.
Kristen Stewart
Kristen Stewart is a household name. Besides the throngs of Twilight fans, she's been a Hollywood regular since playing Jodie Foster's daughter in Panic Room. After stepping out of her comfort zone to play Joan Jett and an action-hero version of Snow White, the world knew she was destined for great things. So it seemed completely unnecessary when she went topless in On the Road. This was arguably her most literary piece of work, so maybe she thought she was giving to her craft. But if she didn't even get naked for her role as a stripper in Welcome to the Rileys, there was really no reason she had to in the Jack Kerouac adaptation.
Anne Hathaway
After starring in The Princess Diaries, Anne Hathaway was primed to be America's sweetheart. As if the very thought made her want to hurl, she tried to throw that image out the window with Havoc, in which she plays a rich, spoiled California high school student who dabbles in a little gang activity. The scene where she goes topless is when she's in bed with a street gang member and realizes she might have gone too far. However, it's another scene that might go down in history: when she grinds on her white thug boyfriend while singing 2Pac's "How Do You Want It?" I would bet my life savings that this was the role Hathaway wants everyone to forget.
Keira Knightley
Like Hathaway, Keira Knightley was headed in a wholesome direction relatively early in her career and even scored an Oscar nomination for 2006's Pride &amp; Prejudice, but she too grew restless. She had to make Domino. The biopic about real-life model turned bounty hunter Domino Harvey tanked, but maybe that's a good thing because that means few people saw the actress's embarrassing lap dance scene and topless sex scene. And this was all after Knightley went topless early in her career in The Hole. All the hard work that Bend It Like Beckham did to undo her less-than-wholesome image was also undone.
Halle Berry
Halle Berry was already building a promising career when she went topless briefly for 2001's Swordfish. In the context of the film, it seems a little out of left field, but if it helped to pave the way for Monster's Ball, in which she has a more extended nude scene, then so be it. That movie made Berry the first African-American female ever to win the best actress Academy Award, which more than likely made any temporary on-set embarrassment worthwhile.
Katie Holmes
Dawson's Creek put Katie Holmes on the map as the ultimate girl next door. Like so many actresses before and after her, she just couldn't wait to shed that image. In 1998, she played a more provocative version of Joey Potter in Disturbing Behavior, but it wasn't until 2000 that she went fully topless in the flop thriller The Gift, which starred some big names like Cate Blanchett, Keanu Reeves and Greg Kinnear. The movie did very little for her career, as did the topless scene.
Natalie Portman
You couldn't ask for a better career start than Natalie Portman's — she burst onto the scene in the cult classic Léon: The Professional, went on to work with both Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Heat, and scored a major franchise with George Lucas' Star Wars reboot. So why did she go and get naked in Hotel Chevalier (even if it is a charming and stylish Wes Anderson short film with a great soundtrack)? And not just any old regular naked, but the elusive full bottom. It seems like the Oscar-winning actress has a penchant for mooning the camera, as she also showed her bum — although partially, in thongs — in Closer and Your Highness.
Lindsay Lohan
Last but not least, there's Lindsay Lohan. After so many revealing outfits and a nude editorial in New York Magazine, Lohan going nude in Machete and The Canyons was a bit like watching LeBron James play a basketball player in a movie. It felt like we had already seen it before and not at all a stretch for the actress. In fact, she practically plays herself in The Canyons, about a shady movie producer who makes amateur pornos with his spoiled wannabe-actress girlfriend. I wouldn't be surprised if she volunteered to play the leading role in a made-for-TV movie about herself next.
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Chris Nashawaty
Who's the one person who connects such different Hollywood artists as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Ron Howard, and Jack Nicholson? The man, the legend, Roger Corman. In his new book Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses, Chris Nashawaty presents on oral history of Corman's career told by the B-movie maestro himself and also by the many marquee names who got their start in the business working on his fast-pace, low-budget productions. But it's also something more. It includes in-depth aesthetic appreciations of ten of Corman's movies, which, taken together, make a compelling case for Corman as an artist. Nashawaty's book, available now from Amazon and Barnes &amp; Noble, started as an article in 2009 for Entertainment Weekly, where he's a film critic. (Full Disclosure: Nashawaty was a colleague of mine when I worked at EW.) That article was pegged to Corman receiving a lifetime achievement Academy Award. "I'd interviewed him various times over the years, and he's always been a good interview," Nashawaty says. "He knows how to tell a story, and he's always got a quote handy. But with this book project I got to sit down with him in person and spend some real time with him and ask him about the whole course of his career." Nashawaty tells us how Corman helped create modern Hollywood.
Hollywood.com: How did you first discover Roger Corman and become a fan? Chris Nashawaty: Well, look, when you tell people that you’re a film critic they expect for you to say you grew up on classy movies and Oscar-winning movies, and the fact is I grew up watching monster movies and Piranha and all sorts of other movies that your parents don’t want you to watch. Roger Corman was a name I just kept recognizing in the credits and it wasn’t until I started working at Entertainment Weekly that I started to dig a little deeper and realized that there are 400 of these movies that he’s attached to. When you discover a great director like Stanley Kubrick and you say “I’m going to watch every Stanley Kubrick movie!” that’s only going to take you 10 movies and then you’re done, but Corman is the gift that keeps on giving.
HW: You really dive in deep to give an aesthetic appreciation of his movies, which is unique because often the artistic value of his movies is ignored. He’s thought of more as a mogul or a producer. Do you think he’s generally neglected as an artist? CN:He’s very much overlooked as a director. I think people focus too much on his drive-in movies or exploitation movies — or only focus on the people he mentored — and don’t think about him as a film stylist. And he made some really good movies. Sure, he started off making some disposable, quickie, cheap drive-in movies about atomic monsters, and those are fine. Some of them are even very good. But it wasn’t until the ‘60s that he began to find his voice and develop a style, particularly in his Edgar Allen Poe adaptations. He directed most of them beginning with House of Usher in 1960 and they’re very atmospheric, much like the films Hammer was making in England at the time. They’re Gothic horror movies, they’re moody and colorful, in large part because he assembled an incredible crew. Nicolas Roeg is the DP on The Tomb of Ligeia. So to break up the oral history of his life with all the racy stories, I picked two of his movies per decade and wrote an essay about each. They’re movies that speak to me personally, like Masque of the Red Death, Attack of the Crab Monsters, and Boxcar Bertha.
He also made this movie in 1962 called The Intruder starring William Shatner that was way ahead of its time. It was about segregation in the South. It was a very personal film for Corman and really well made too. Shatner plays a rabble-rousing racist who goes to a Southern town and whips the locals into a frenzy about integration in the schools. It’s a very progressive film about a hot topic that the Hollywood studios wouldn’t even have touched until another five years with In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and even then not very forcefully. But this is a movie that’s very explosive. Ironically, it’s his most personal film and the only one he lost money on in his career.
HW: Do you have a particular favorite of his movies? CN: It's probably a tie. There's Masque of the Red Death, which is my favorite of his Poe movies. It’s just so twisted and gorgeous, it’s like a Bergman film made into an exploitation horror movie. It’s great. And the other one is probably the first Corman movie I ever saw, which is Piranha. I remember seeing that in the theater when I was really young, I don’t know how or why my parents thought it was a good idea to take me to see a movie called Piranha. But they did, God bless them, and that movie has just always stuck with me. It was Joe Dante’s first movie, and it had a script by John Sayles. It’s a great Jaws ripoff about killer fish turning people into mincemeat.
HW: That seems to be a very sore point for him, that he lost money on The Intruder in particular. CN: Yeah, he mortgaged his house to make that movie. It was that personal to him. And the fact that it wasn’t a success really stung him, deeply. If it had been a success, it’s interesting to think what kind of films he might have made afterward. But it taught him a lesson that maybe this whole personal filmmaking thing wasn’t necessarily something that was going to work for him. Which isn’t to say that his subsequent movies aren’t personal — they are — but he never tried to say something in the same way that he did in that movie again.
HW: You make the argument that he was always ahead of the curve — certainly on race relations as in The Intruder — but also when it came to recognizing the burgeoning youth market. CN: You know the teenager is a very ‘50s concept. The whole idea of young kids being able to spend money and go to the drive-ins, that was something that didn’t exist until the ‘50s and I don’t think Hollywood really recognized them as a real lucrative market. But Corman did. Some of the safer movies that were being aimed at teens at the time, the Beach Party/Beach Blanket Bingo movies, they were fun and campy but they weren’t movies that teenagers necessarily wanted to see…they weren’t about rebellion really. But Corman recognized there was a whole demographic that was being ignored. He saw that, pounced on it, and made biker movies like The Wild Angels and just movies that were showing what was going on in society before anyone else was.
HW: Now, fifty years later, so much of Hollywood filmmaking as a whole is geared toward teenagers. People often credit Jaws and Star Wars for creating youth-oriented blockbuster culture, but do you think Corman deserves his share of recognition for helping create modern Hollywood? CN: I do, yeah, in a lot of ways. And not just that one. There are several different moments where he recognized what was going on faster than the slower-on-the-uptake studios did. One of them was noticing there was an underserved teen market for movies. Another was much later in the ‘80s, when the country was being overrun by videostores, the VHS market was not one the studios exploited right away. It was Corman, who’d been sort of squeezed out of making movies who rejuvenated his business by recognizing there was this VHS market. He made these straight-to-video movies because he knew mom-and-pop video shops were hungry for product. So he’d make straight-to-video movies and put the most lurid, garish, sexy cover he could put on them, with the movie being almost an afterthought, and they’d sell like hotcakes.
Chris Nashawaty
HW: Looking at all the great Corman posters from the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s featured in your book, it hits home how much the art of movie posters seems to have been lost. CN: I agree. He didn’t have budgets and he didn’t have stars so all he really had to sell a movie was a great poster. In a way it was the purest form of advertising you can imagine: you make a great poster and you slap an incredible tagline on it. My favorite is for Angels Hard As They Come, from 1971, and it’s a biker movie starring Scott Glenn and Gary Busey. The tagline is “Big men with throbbing machines and the girls who take them on.” I mean, that’s a great come on. It’s total Barnum &amp; Bailey “Sell! Sell! Sell!” He was just a master at making posters and trailers that were in a way better than the movies themselves.
HW: Sometimes the alumni of Corman University speak about him with some snark, but generally there seems to be real affection there. Why do you think that is? CN: Once these people went on to have legitimate careers they looked back on their films for Corman as their salad days. It was a great time — they were young, they weren’t getting paid a lot of money, but they got to make a movie. I think we forget how hard, and how rare, that is. You had to work your way up the ladder and studios were closed shops to a lot of people. Corman took the best and brightest out of the film schools and said, “Hey, I’m going to exploit you, I’m going to pay you nothing, I’m going to work you to the bone, but I’m going to give you the shot to make a movie.” And I think a lot of those people who went on to work for big studios realized that they didn’t know how good they had it when they were making movies for Roger Corman because he didn’t give them endless notes or micromanage what they were doing.
HW: You also argue that Corman is the single greatest connecting thread between Old Hollywood and New Hollywood. CN: I can’t think of anyone else who has had the same sort of longevity and is as much of a throughline of the past 60 years of Hollywood. Corman may not be a household name, but he is probably the least known, most influential figure in the last half century of Hollywood. And he’s still making movies today for Syfy. Nobody else has had the reach or impact that he’s had. Just look at the famous people who got their starts in his films, everyone from Jack Nicholson to Scorsese to James Cameron to Coppola, if you take all of those people out of the history of Hollywood, if Corman had not given them their break, the movie industry as we know it today would not exist.
Chris Nashawaty
HW: And he created an independent model of film production that anticipated the independent film revolution by decades. CN: Corman was really the only one I can think of, maybe more recently Miramax, who gave the major studios a run for their money. Because there had been poverty row independent studios since the start of Hollywood, but they could come and go. Between the first company he worked for, American International Pictures, and then his own company New World Pictures, he streamlined and refined what independent filmmaking could be. And I don’t think he gets enough credit for that.
HW: Do you think it would be possible for there to be a Roger Corman today? CN: I don’t think it’s possible for there to be a Roger Corman today because, in a way, anybody can make a movie now. And a lot of people who shouldn’t be making movies are now, because it’s so easy. You can make a movie with your iPhone. But Corman is a singular example of someone who had the genius to make movies that looked like real movies and have them make money. I don’t think you can make the quantity and the quality of movies that he made today.
HW: Do you think Corman will like your book? CN: I think so, because all of the people I interviewed offer up their love letters to him in a way, even though he comes in for some gentle ribbing about how cheap he was. I think he’s treated fairly, though, and his career is celebrated. My favorite quote in the whole book is in the introduction, and it’s from Ron Howard when he was making his first movie as a director, for Corman, called Grand Theft Auto. Corman was very tight on the budget with him, and Ron Howard needed some more extras for which Corman wouldn’t pony up any more money. So Ron Howard was despondent, but Corman walked up to him and said, “Ron, know this. If you do a good job for me on this picture, you’ll never have to work for me again.” Sure, Howard’s recollection of that pokes fun at him a bit, but the underlying message was “I’m giving you a shot and if you do a good job you’ll be able to graduate beyond me.” It was up to you to make something of yourself, to show what you’ve got.
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'Mark Metcalfe/Getty ImagesCurrently sitting pretty at No. 3 on the US Hot 100, New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde appears to have come from nowhere to score one of the most addictive and yet effortlessly cool songs of the summer. With a debut album, Pure Heroine, due for release on September 27, here’s a look at some of the things you need to know about Ella Yelich-O'Connor.She signed to Universal aged just 13Spotted by an A&amp;R scout following a talent show performance at her Auckland school, Lorde signed to Universal on a development deal aged just 13 and has spent the last three years juggling her school commitments with writing her own material.She's obsessed with royaltyAs well as naming her breakthrough hit "Royals," Lorde's moniker was also inspired by her love of the aristocracy: “When I was trying to come up with a stage name, I thought ‘Lord' was super rad, but really masculine—ever since I was a little kid, I have been really into royals. So to make Lord more feminine, I just put an ‘e' on the end! Some people think it's religious, but it's not.
She likes but can't relate to Lana Del ReyDespite professing a love for the likes of Drake, Nicki Minaj and Lana Del Rey, Lorde has revealed that "Royals" is actually a reaction to the 'opulence' and 'bullsh*t' that such artists regularly refer to in their music.She's a superstar in New ZealandLorde is already on her way to achieving pop royalty status in her New Zealand homeland. Both "Royals" and "Tennis Court" debuted at No.1 on the country’s Top 40 chart, the former of which has already received the cover version treatment on The X-Factor, while she and co-writer Joel Little have recently been shortlisted for industry award The Silver Scroll.She's the new Tracy Bonham"Royals" recently topped the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, making her the first female artist to do so since angsty singer-violinist Tracy Bonham back in 1996, the same year Lorde was born.
She has a sick Frank Ocean to thank for her Australian big breakDespite conquering her homeland, she was still an unknown in neighbouring Australia until Frank Ocean pulled out of the Splendour In The Grass festival in July over a career-threatening vocal cord injury, allowing last-minute replacement Lorde to wow the crowds with a typically self-assured set.She makes Victoria Beckham look overly smileyDon't expect to see her flashing her teeth too often. The permanently sultry musician has admitted that she hates smiling and prefers to spend her life 'looking fierce' in photos.
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Matthew Horwood/FilmMagic
Benedict Cumberbatch recently told the paparazzi to turn their attention to Egypt rather than himself. His message seems a bit self-serving; he's using his desire for privacy to show the world how modest and globally aware he is. It also seems paternalistic for an actor to tell people in his industry what to pay attention to, as if they had sat down before they began their work day, wondered whether Cumberbatch or Egypt was more important, and idiotically decided on Cumberbatch. Anyway, Cumberbatch joins a group of celebrities who are constantly stressing their unimportance. Here are five of the humble few.
1. Jennifer Lawrence has often said that acting is an unimportant career, and she's called herself "vastly uneducated" “Everybody’s like, ‘How can you remain with a level head?’ And I’m like, ‘Why would I ever get cocky? I’m not saving anybody’s life. There are doctors who save lives and firemen who run into burning buildings. I’m making movies. It’s stupid.’”
2. Rob Pattinson thinks that his heartthrob status is more due to luck than any inherant attractiveness "I have been lucky, of course. Like, last year, if I went out, I'd have to fight to chat someone up. This year, I look exactly the same, which is really scruffy, and yet lots of people seem to have just changed their minds and decided I'm really sexy."
3. Keanu Reeves is so modest that he's a bit of a downer "I'm sorry my existence is not very noble, sublime, or even beneficial."
4. Kristen Stewart never seems to love the spotlight, and agrees with JLaw that there are more important jobs out there "A lot of actors think that what we do is so important, like we're saving people's lives or something."
5. Robert Downey, Jr. does not consider himself an artist "I know very little about acting. I'm just an incredibly gifted faker."
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Cinedigm
Short Term 12, which tells the story of a foster care facility and those who live and work there, is less a movie than it is a living, breathing thing. And its beating heart is 23-year-old Brie Larson, who plays supervisor Grace. Larson's performance is a quiet, introspective tour de force. She is able to tell Grace's story — which includes a secret history of abuse and an unyeilding compassion for the kids she looks after, in particular, 15-year-old Jayden — with few words; her eyes and body language say it all. So it's no surprise that Larson has already found herself in the middle of some well-deserved Oscar buzz (which we may be guilty of propagating).
When Hollywood.com sat down to speak with Larson, it was instantly obvious that she and Grace are worlds apart. While Larson shares her character's passion, Larson is a loquatious, charming young woman immune to the effects of the industry and unaware of how much attention she is about to receive. Oscars? "That doesn't happen to actual people," she tells us. She is in for the best kind of rude awakening.
Hollywood.com: Are you aware how huge this movie is going to be?Brie Larson: It's really a strange thing. I've asked since South by South West — that was the first time I noticed it really clicked with people — I asked everyone to not tell me anything because I just want to be ignorant and just enjoy the individual experience — to be open to it and to experience it and not feel like people are observing me or expecting me to do anything. So I haven't read anything; but there's been a few people who have slipped up to me and have said from blah blah blah article this was said. But I have no idea, I feel like none of this makes any sense to me. But it will make sense maybe a year from now, or maybe when I'm 60. I just don't know what happens after. The whole time, I keep going, "What does this even add up to or mean?"
It means you should maybe start looking for an Oscar dress…That doesn't happen to actual people…
It happened to Jennifer Lawrence!Yes, and she is on Team Human. Even her, I feel, she's a larger than life figure at this point. And I don't do that, I still shop at Forever 21. It's all really exciting. That's what I keep texting my mom. We've been doing this for a while and I don't understand it, but at least it makes my mom really proud and excited that I'm being recognized for something that I've worked hard at. I didn't go to college or even graduate high school properly, so this is my one.
I think what it comes down to is that this is a movie that really hits home for a lot of people. And it's not that people have necessarily experienced these things in their own lives, but it's a very human story. With that in mind, what part of this story particularly appealed to you? Or was it just the whole shebang? I feel like the film means so many different things to me and the more I've watched it the more it opens up to me as to what it is. I think at first, when I'm first reading a script you can't help but focus and hone in on the character you're potentially going to play. Because it's all about, Do I know this person? Can I honestly play this person? How do I go about doing it? Do I feel comfortable in this situation with these people to play this role? You're analyzing the whole thing. So even while shooting it, I was seeing everything through Grace's perspective — because I had to. I was her. So I think for me at the time I was very interested in playing a woman who had a hard time communicating and being able to hone how much can be expressed through film without saying anything. And how hard it is. I think we do these reveals in movies all the time where someone opens up about something. But really? It's hard to talk. It's hard when things get emotional to tap into that and recognize what you're feeling and be able to correct it. So I thought that was an interesting aspect of filming, of myself to explore.
But then the more that I've been watching the film, and the longer it's gone on, I think the bigger thing for me and for Grace is accepting that you're of good things, that you're worthy of love and loving others through the process. And I think that's a really powerful human thing — and that's what you're saying. And I think that's exactly why the film hits people in this really really intense way because it's not like we're showing it to a bunch of people who've been abused or in foster care. We have had those people [see it], and they relate to it in one way. And then there are people who've just loved something and have had it taken away from them. That's the essence of the whole thing: the beauty and the flaw and the struggle of being a human being. The day-to-day stuff. The connections we make and the misconnections we make. The things we wish we would've said, and the things we wish we could take back from saying. And the power that we have as humans over each other to influence each other and to change the course of our life and our actual genetic structure.
You mention that before you signed on to do this project you really wanted to make sure that you felt comfortable with the people as well. What was it like working with the final cast and crew? It was the best. Truly, the best. It was the most fun and the most loving group of people I've worked with, which says a lot. I just don't think that I could've done what I did if I hadn't felt totally loved and supported, first as Brie the human being and then second as an actor in a movie. And that we were all trying to make this art project really good. I realized how important it is when you feel like you're given the space and the credit to do something that allowed me to feel comfortable exploring not winking to the camera or giving these things that were clues to be people, "Hey I actually do know what's going on in Grace's head!" I was able to do something that was much more subtle and with very little concern for the camera. It was really freeing for me to not do hair and make-up and to wear my own clothes mixed with Destin [Cretton, the director]'s sister's clothes. And just have it lived through, and not have it feel any different from when I was cooking dinner and talking to my boyfriend when I got home.
And what was it like working with John Gallagher Jr. specifically? You two are so close in the film and it looked so natural.It was great. You know, those things are so strange. A lot of people have been saying to me, ''You must've know Destin for a really long time and John before you started shooting." And to be honest, we just didn't. We didn't have that luxury. Luckily, we're all just really open people, and you know pretty quickly when you meet someone, "This is a person I can trust," or, "This person I don't really like." And I really loved every person on this film. I feel like I'm just, through this [press tour] process, getting to know who John is and who Destin is. And the person I've learned most about is Keith [Stanfield] because he, at the very beginning, before we started shooting, said, "I just want you know that Marcus doesn't trust [Grace] so I can't trust you. I don't want you to be offended but I'm not going to talk to you or hang out with you on or off screen." He never made eye contact with me. Even on the last day of shooting, there was only one seat left at lunch and it was at the same table as him. And I thought, "Whatever it's the last day." He instantly go up and moved and I was like, "Wow, really? Even the last day?"
It's not until this really amazing experience of us getting to fly and travel together and sit next to each other on long flights that we're actually learning who each other are. Because up until that point it was all within the context of this other world, and these other people and this story we were trying to tell. John and I had one dinner before we started shooting, and Destin did this really amazing thing, because he knew that John and I were getting dinner, and so he dropped off an envelope at John's place that John didn't know about until he walked out the door. It said, "To Brie and John. Don't open it until you get to the restaurant." So he shows up, it was our first time meeting, and he was like, "I got this thing." And I was like, "Is it a scavenger hunt?!" We opened it up and it had a cute little note from [Destin] and bunches of pieces of paper that were conversation starters. It was brilliant. And it was like, "What are your fears about being a parent?" to "What's your most vivid childhood memory?" to "What's a trauma you feel comfortable talking about?" "When was the last time you felt alon?" and "What do you think Grace and Mason's first date was like?" "How long have they been together for?" So without us even realizing it, we were learning how to communicate with each other, learning about each other, learning about the characters, learning how to bounce ideas off of one another. It was so easy and we didn't have to have that weird thing where you're forced to go, "Well we gotta like each other, so let's just do it." It was a very natural thing. It was really great.
This may sound strange, but I was surprised after I saw the movie how young you are in real life. Were you purposefully playing Grace to be older? Did you have an age for in your mind or in the script?I think maybe Grace was supposed to be older on the page, but I'm 23 and I got cast. I don't know. I think it's something about — and I'm surprised because I don't have make-up on or my hair done — that there's something about her that seems ageless. I feel like there are some times when I watch it I look like a child and others I'm like, that's a woman.
She's lived a lot of life.It's that and I also think it's the assuredness of her voice and the way she has to at times bark orders at people. And it sounds convincing, which is a really important thing for me, that it didn't sound like I was a child whining at people. I was really concerned with the tone of my voice when I was talking. I had to practice because I wasn't used to being forceful like that. I had never talked to anybody, let alone kids, in the way that I had to in this film.
Grace obviously has a lot of intense moments in the movie. Were there any scenes that were particularly difficult for you to film or that you were worried about filming?I mean, I was kinda worried every day. But, I mean, that was the fun of it. I read the script obviously many, many times. And it was not until I was shooting that I realized there's no light thing. Theres no kinda like, oh that's a whatever scene so I can walk through that one. So you get through the day pretty much being an actual social worker. So I get home and they're like, "Oh you have a 7 AM call tomorrow." And I look at what we're filming and it's like, You know I can't do it, there's no way. But for the most part I was pretty good at getting into Grace and understanding what her mental space was like, and then understanding what my own mental space was like and making sure that there was a big differentiation between the two.
But there was one day where I went home really shaken. It was the day that we ended the day with Brie finding Marcus trying to hurt himself and I personally have an aversion to blood. My dog broke a nail once and I fainted. I just don't deal with looking at it well, it makes me queazy. And Keith is a very good actor, and it was very jarring to go through the motions of discovering this thing and trying to save his life then watching his eyes roll to the back of his head. It really freaked me out. And that was the only time I don't remember leaving set — I don't really know how I got home. I had a lot of people from set that called because they were concerned about me driving home. That was the only time when I got home I wanted to scrub myself and — I wear my hair parted on the side but Grace wears it in the middle. That was the only time that I went home and had to brush my hair to the side to do the physical change of, That's not real life and thank goodness. It's like when you have a dream that feels so real, and when you wake up it still screws with you. You just go, "I felt it, though, it seemed like that happened." Even though it didn't actually happen. But other than that, pretty much everything else was very clear to me.
And in order for me to go to those places, I enjoy having a rapport with the crew. I think it's an important part of it because we're doing this whole thing together. I didn't want to seem like a self-centered actor where every day was me getting all tweaky in the corner and me not paying attention to anybody else and "gotta capture this whole wild animal" sort of thing. So I just decided from early on to be clear with my boundaries and just say, "I'll let you guys know when I need my space." So there were certain scenes where I was like, "I'm going really far deep under water. You're not even going to recognize me because it's not me anymore and I'm probably not going to remember this afterwards, but I'm going to go there. And then I'll let you know when I come up for air." Destin was kind of like the guardian angel, the air tank at the top of the water. And I'd swim down and then he would say, "We got it! Come up for air!" and then I'd swim to the top and then we could look at the tapes. You know, and it's me again.
You have three big festival movies coming out this year — Short term 12, Spectacular Now, and Don Jon — and all of them feel very different. I know you've been trying to avoid the feedback, but doing the press for them, hearing the reception, how has it been for each distinct movie different for you?It feels really surreal that the three movies that I did not only made it into festivals but have all been really well received. They're all very different and all of my characters are very different. That's really cool, and that's just the dream. I don't know, I mean, I feel like I'm just pinching myself a lot right now. It was quite tough this morning because I woke up in this very comfortable hotel bed and had coffee delivered to me in my hotel room. And I felt okay saying, "Yeah I'll pay $10 for my coffee because it got delivered to my room." I actually cried about it. I can't believe it. I'm just too cheap. I'm cheap. I bought this shirt at a thrift store! So it's a fun little vacation.
Short Term 12 opens in limited release Friday, Aug. 23, and nationwide Aug. 30.
More:The Miraculous 'Short Term 12' Is Heartbreaking and Hopeful 'Short Term 12' Cast Reflects on SXSW Grand Jury Prize 'Short Term 12' Is a Small Movie With a Big Impact
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Open Road Films
After all the hype leading up to the release of Jobs, the biopic of turtlenecked Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher, the movie just couldn’t boot up. Despite opening wide in an impressive 2,381 theaters, the movie debuted at #7, banking only $6.7 million. Its underperformance has gotten us thinking. You know what would’ve been a much more interesting biopic? One on Steve Wozniak, the pudgy, bearded tech-wiz who built the original Apple I and Apple II computers before leaving Apple in the mid-80s following a plane crash to teach elementary school and eventually date Kathy Griffin and compete on Dancing With the Stars. He was played by Josh Gad in Jobs, but we feel he needs the spotlight himself. In fact, we so believe in the bankability of Wozniak’s life story that we’ve written our very own pitch for the movie. Here’s how it goes:
PROLOGUE
FADE IN:
“You’ve never seen so much underwear thrown on stage until you’ve been to a Clay Aiken concert.”
Kathy Griffin pauses after finishing her Clay Aiken routine and points to a rotund, balding man who looks like a cousin to Gimli, Son of Gloin, sitting in the front row.
“And now I’d like to introduce my lover and partner in crime, a man who could buy and sell all of you a hundred times: Mr. Steve Wozniak.”
A close-up of Steve Wozniak shows him beaming like the mother of the bride. Smash cut to black, over which only the sound of someone taking a bite out of an apple can be heard. Fade in to a kitchen table in which a doughy hand places an apple with a sizable bite taken out of it. Over the Apple appears the title:
The Woz: Based on the Memoir iWoz by Steve Wozniak
ACT I
35 years earlier, a young Wozniak writes line after line of indecipherable code on a blackboard, while his friend and Hewlett Packard colleague Steve Jobs, a moptopped burnout in shredded jeans, holds a beer on Woz’s couch and tells him about a contest he’s entered. He has to design a simplified circuit board that cuts down on the number of chips for the new videogame Breakout. Jobs doesn’t know squat about building a circuit board, so if Wozniak helps him he’ll split the prize money with him. Woz agrees, though he’s concerned that it’ll distract from his responsibilities to the Homebrew Computer Club. He swaps some Star Trek action figures to get the parts he needs and builds the circuit-board for Jobs. They win and Jobs collects $5,000 as a reward but tells Woz he only got $700, cheating him out of most of his share. (Yes, this really happened.)
That sets up Woz as our lovable schlub hero who has all of the genius but gets little of the credit. History may be written by assholes, but nice guys like Woz are the ones you root for. The whole Breakout circuit board experience makes Wozniak want to try his hand at building a personal microcomputer. We see him slaving away in his garage assembling circuits and chips in a montage set to Styx, as if he were Tony Stark in a cave somewhere assembling the Iron Man suit. He takes it to his friends at the Homebrew Computer Club who have made their own personal computers, and Woz’s is wildly superior. Jobs butts in again and says he wants to market it, but Wozniak isn’t really into that. He’s too much of an artist to prostitute his genius. But, as before, Jobs persuades him.
ACT II
This time Wozniak sells his beloved HP scientific calculator to raise the money they need to market his computer, named the Apple I after his favorite snack. But he holds on to his beloved Gorn doll. Nothing will part him from that. He suggests selling the Apple I for $666.66 but is confused why buyers seem averse to that figure until his old friend Jobs tells him that number is the “mark of the beast.” Woz realizes this incident shows he may not have the marketing savvy necessary to make the Apple I successful, so he recruits Jobs to help him out once again. This time, they found Apple Computers. A Saving Lincoln-style knocking-on-doors montage shows them trying to sell it, and eventually they find a buyer who wants a large order for his story. That sets the stage for the Apple II.
Skip ahead five years and Wozniak and Jobs are now the toast of the computer industry. But a comical sequence in which Woz crashes his light aircraft begins his departure from the company. It makes him realize he has money but he’s not satisfied. So he leaves Apple, re-enrolls at UC Berkeley under the fake name Rocky Clark (named after his dog Rocky Raccoon and wife Candice Clark) and, after a sequence showing him totally owning his fellow computer science classmates, becomes a thirtysomething graduate. Time to go back to Apple.
Act III
Jobs doesn’t really want Wozniak around Apple, though. They have a shouting match that ends with Wozniak screaming “I am Apple!” and Jobs screaming “No, I am Apple!” Woz walks away and becomes a schoolteacher, teaching kids how to use computers. Years later, he's channel-surfing and stumbles upon a high-collared Jobs about to introduce the iPod. He flips to the next channel and sees Kathy Griffin performing her bit about Oprah's appearance on PBS' Colonial House. This time he doesn’t change the channel. Next, we see Steve and Kathy attending the Emmy Awards together as Woz, in voiceover, says “Orson Welles once said that Italy under the Borgias had decades of war and bloodshed but produced Michelangelo and Leonardo DaVinci. Switzerland had hundreds of years of peace and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock. Well, I’m here to ask, what’s so wrong with cuckoo clocks?”
Owen Beiny/WENN
Cut to:
Woz competing on Dancing With the Stars. He’s just gotten a 10 out of thirty for his Argentine Tango and Bruno Tonioli says, “You may have founded Apple Computer. But you look like you’ve eaten too many apple pies.” Woz laughs and shimmies off with his dance partner as his voiceover concludes, “Nice guys may not often finish first…but at least we can enjoy our lives.”
Now isn’t that a movie you want to see?
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Bret Easton Ellis certainly has a type. The American Psycho author has dug deep into the soul of trust fund brats all throughout his career. Now he's served up another character worthy of Patrick Bateman: James Deen's Christian in The Canyons, a smug Hollywood aspirant who torments Lindsay Lohan. We caught up with Ellis to talk The Canyons, Lohan's wild behavior on set, and whether privacy is something that's obtainable — or even desired — in today's world.
I just watched The Canyons online. IFC sent me a link that expires in approximately three days.
So you were watching it in the way it was intended to be watched. That's how we built the movie. That we knew that this was going to be watched that way.
Can you tell me more about that?
It was just the idea that for a certain kind of movie, getting people into the theaters is very difficult and it's very expensive. And so when we first started thinking about The Canyons, we realized that we were making this for VOD, and we were making this for people who are probably going to watch it on their computer screen or on demand. And it was never really intended for a theatrical release. Even we we were shooting it, we didn't think we were going to have one. Even when we made the deal with IFC to distribute the movie, we thought "okay yeah a theater in LA, a theater in New York" We really doubted that it was going to be any wider than that. So most of it has to do with expense. I mean, we put our money into it, we funded the bulk of the movie on Kickstarter. We own the movie, so to speak, so it kind of is like, we don't have the money to do a full-on ad campaign because it's just too expensive, so this is just the new reality of the economics of making a movie like The Canyons. So yeah that's the way to see it. That's the only way i've seen it so far — I haven't seen it in a theater. I've only seen it on my computer.
Well, backing up a little bit, I'd love to hear from you about your influences for writing the screenplay and what made you decide to go straight to a screenplay and not write a book first.
Well, it never felt like a novel to me. It never announced itself like a novel to me. And I write a lot of scripts and the scripts that I write should be filmed content — they should be a TV series or a film or a video or whatever I'm working on. The novel is trickier. The novel is kind of about consciousness and sensibility and writing style and not about the story so much but how the story is told, and it's much more unconventional in certain regards. And with The Canyons, The Canyons came about because Paul and I had been working on a movie that got shut down a month before it was about to be shot, and it was a $15 million thriller and it starred Anton Yelchin and Emmy Rossum and it was going to be shot in Costa Rica and suddenly half of the money fell apart-- it just disappeared. half the money was gone in an afternoon, and we got the phone call-- and I had been working on this project for six or seven years. Paul had just come on for about a year, and he did all the location scouting, got all the special effects ready. And then we were both really frustrated, it was like "Why are we doing this? Why are we working for a studio or production people who are kind of lying to us about what kind of money they have and then when it comes time to write a check, they don't have the money," so he said, "Why don't you write a micro budget movie, a really inexpensive movie set in LA, and I'll shoot it, I'll direct it, and then we'll own it." And that's how it happened, and so I started thinking about "Okay, who do I want to write about now? What am I thinking about now?" and I was kind of thinking about the fringes of Hollywood. Who are these people? They're rich people with money? They're kind of like a Christian character, and then I was thinking a lot about actors in Hollywood and what their trajectory is, young actors who move here and they don't make it and their struggles. and I've known a lot of them, and I wanted to write about that character, and then it all started to fall into place. We also wanted it to be kind of neo noir, like people having secrets in a time of transparency, like, how can you have secrets really anymore? People find out about everything. So all of these things came together, and I wrote the script really quickly and Paul said "great, let's cast this and shoot it" but between the time that I first started writing the canyons and Paul had the first cut of the movie, that was January to August 2012. And so instead of 7 years of trying to get a movie off the ground, we, from conception to a final cut, is more or less 8 months, 9 months. And that was a great way to work.
Of course, something that's made the film buzzy, as I'm sure you're well aware by now, is the casting of Lindsay Lohan and James Deen. And I'm wondering how each of them came to the story and how you came to work with them.
Well actually, you know, look, I became fascinated by James Deen just at the time that I began writing The Canyons, I thought that he'd be perfect for Christian, and I started writing Christian for James. and then I met James, it was after I tweeted something about him, I didn't even think he was going to respond, I didn't even tweet it at him, I just said "writing a script where the main character is a lot like James Deen" or something like that and then he tweeted back and said "I can't wait to read it." And so we met and I was even more convinced after we met that he could pull it off. I'd watched a lot of his porn, and I thought that he had this really interesting quantity that i hadn't seen in porn before, like someone who was really committed and very expressive and then also in non-porn scenes, I thought he had this kind of casual, boy next door quality that I just really liked, and I thought that he'd be perfect for this role. So I wrote it for him and then it was trying to get Paul to even audition him. But since Paul and I were partners on this, he grudgingly agreed. And this is why James was cast: out of the hundreds of guys that auditioned for the movie, he was the best. He just brought something to it, and you know, the pool of actors was very large, but no one big because this is a micro budget movie where you're not being paid anything, and you have to be naked, and you have to simulate sex and you have to bring your own lunch and drive your own car to the set. We had a very democratic way of casting. We ended up casting on this thing called letitcast.com, where anyone could read the sides that were posted and then film your own audition. And we watched every audition from all over the world that came in through letitcast. James just happened to be the best. And the same with Lindsay. Paul then wanted Lindsay to come in, and I had the same reaction that Paul had with James. I was like "Are you kidding me? Lindsay has so much baggage right now and I know people who know her. I hear she's not really at a great place." And Paul said "No no no, see her, watch her audition" and so I did and she was the best, out of the hundreds of actresses that we saw. And so it came down not to stunt casting but personal preference. They were the best two people, and they embodied those characters. That is how it came about. I don't think Paul would really stand for stunt casting, he considers himself much more of an artist. And there wasn't that much at stake -- we were making a no budget movie, and you know, we could've just done it anyway and casted some unknowns, but they were the best.
How much pause did it give you knowing the place that Lindsay was in? It sounds like not very much, just that after you saw her, that was it. Was that the case?
The script was finished and we were already looking at tons of actresses for that role. She came in very very late to the game, about a month before we began shooting…ahh a little longer than that… and she said she got hold of the script and she wanted to the lead. And I think we were all skeptical and then she auditioned and she was really good. So everything else fell away. It was just "who is best for this movie?" and Lindsay was troubled, and she did have her problems with Paul. She was fired before shooting even began, and then she kind of got back into shape. There's all the gossip — which, it's not gossip, it is true. Everything you read about Lindsay's behavior on set is true-- but it also only makes up about 15 percent of her behavior. That New York Times piece had all the facts right, but they took place over about a four or five day period out of a 23-day shoot. So the rest of the time, she was on schedule, on time. We remained within budget. We remained with that schedule. She did not veer the movie off of its trajectory. But she was a troubled actress at that period of her life. Paul Schrader, though, that first movie he made was with Richard Pryor, a movie called Blue Collar. And Paul said that Richard Pryor tried to murder him constantly during the shooting of that movie, and that Paul wanted to commit suicide every night. The Canyons wasn't like that, at all.
Glad to hear it. Also, a theme that you already mentioned, that I think is so widespread in this movie, is the fact that no one has a private life. and I think that's interesting, especially considering the fact that you yourself are so vocal on twitter. What's kind of your stance on that? Can people have private lives anymore?
I mean, if you want to hide in a cave, you can. If you just want to lock yourself in a room, you can. If you want to engage with the world, you can't. you just can't have it, and there's nothing wrong with that. I believe in total transparency, and you just need to be who you are. and there's no point in hiding things about yourself. We're not moving into that kind of world anymore. So I think that's just becoming the language that we speak.
So I was thinking about transparency a lot in January and February of 2012 and I've been thinking about it a lot anyway. And I know people who don't believe in it, but I also think that it's just where we are. And I don't know where it gets you if you aren't a real, authentic person. I know that in society, we seem to be hitting it everyday, where things are being revealed about people, and you just can't hide it anymore. You just have to roll with it. Though society does punish people for it, that's true. Society is in this mode of punishing people for just being who they are, and I hope that moves past that at some point. And also, just in the movie itself, how do you do a neo-noir film whose very existence depends on secrets? People having secrets and things being revealed in an era of transparency. And what do you do with a character like Christian who mouths off about how we're all transparent, but actually he's pretty hypocritical about it.
Another theme I saw in the film is this idea of having to act and be an actor in your everyday life. And Christian even says that line to his therapist at the end, that he feels like an actor. How much of this movie as a whole do you see as kind of a commentary on Hollywood and being in the industry?
Well, a lot, because of who the characters are. They're on the fringes of Hollywood, and honestly, so am I. I don't work on big studio projects. I work on independent projects that I'm interested in. I'm not really part of the system. I'm kind of an outsider, and so is Paul. Definitely James is and Lindsay is. So writing this movie about people on the fringes of the industry trying to put this horror movie together in New Mexico or wherever it is. I was just thinking about my place too. And I was thinking about, with transparency, comes the notion that you don't have to act anymore. You don't have to pose anymore. You can just be yourself. To have that transparency in that culture also interested me a lot. But I also believe that to a degree, also the very nature of society, we do play a variety of roles. I'm not who I am with my boyfriend as I am with my mom. There's a different set of things that are demanded in that dynamic. But at the same time, I do believe that there needs to be a kind of genuineness, a kind of authenticity to people.
By the end of the film, Christian's character has become kind of a Patrick Bateman kind of character. His name is Christian, and Patrick Bateman was played by Christian Bale. Was that on purpose?
I didn't really think about that. I was thinking about… what was on at that time that I was watching where someone was named Christian? I don't know. I just wanted to use the name. I wasn't thinking of Christian Bale. I think I was just thinking of Christianity, to be pretentious. I really wrote the movie for Paul. I shaped it for him, because I'd seen all of his work, and I really wanted something that thematically was in tune with the rest of his work. So I think Christian came from Paul's own issues about religion. Honestly, I think that's where it came from. And then I have Christian Bale. Why didn't that land in front of me? But I wonder if it was from a movie or some TV show where the guy's name was Christian...
One of the moments in the movie that I thought was really interesting is when Christian ultimately decides that he believes that Tara is cheating on him and then he goes after Ryan's bank account. He's being wronged in a sexual realm and goes after him in the financial realm. I was wondering what your thoughts were about conflating the idea of money and sex.
The movie is so much about that, because the entire relationship between Christian and Tara has an inequality to it because he has the money, and she doesn't. But I believe that also there was a point before we entered into this movie that they genuinely liked each other. I don't believe that she just hooked up with him because he had money. If you're a pretty girl in this town, you have your pick of who you want to end up getting into that kind of relationship with if you want to. So there had to be something else about the relationship before this, where he really cared about her and she liked him a lot. But yes, this notion of money playing a part in non-business relationships has always been on my mind and I think it's a theme that runs throughout my work. And I think that for this particular scenario, this particular movie, I think I worked on a lot of levels. It tells you a lot about Christian and what's on his mind, and how he feels he can torture Ryan. And the same way with Lindsay telling the Ryan character why she has really stuck with Christian. She does say she loves him over and over but she does not want to go back to what is for a lot of actors in this town, a kind of rough existence. So I'm sympathetic to all the characters to a degree. I'm sympathetic to a degree with christian. I don't think I could write a character where I thought they were just completely irredeemable -- there has to be something that I recognize, and there has to be some empathy for them, you know.
I'm curious on your thoughts on the Tara character. Because for so much of the movie, she seems not completely in control, but she has her faculties about her and she's pretty savvy. And then by the end of the movie, I feel like she becomes a total victim. And I was wondering, what was your intention in creating a character like that?
I think that ultimately everyone kind of loses. No one really gets what they want. And by the way Tara did put herself in this position, so I don't think she's unduly victimized in a way. She's part of her own victimization. I mean, she signed onto this. I think everyone to a degree becomes somewhat victimized. I do think, however, saying that, it seems much less apparent in the film than perhaps in the screenplay because of the way Lindsay plays Tara. She didn't change any of the dialogue, but she brought a much more combative, confrontational element of the character out into view. She plays scenes with James like she's very angry a lot of the time, and those scenes were written as more of conversations, and she gave them a deeper drama than as they were written in the script. And to me, personally, she doesn't come off as much of a victim — she made me realize how much a victim I had written Tara and so she just gave it a spin by giving the dialogue a different dynamic, but I do think that everyone kind of victimizes themselves in a way. The Cynthia character becomes the ultimate victim. Amanda becomes a victim. A victim is a strange word and I'm really interested in what it means and how people victimize themselves and who is a victim in who's mind. It's been on my mind a lot lately.
I'm curious to hear more about how you think the cast brought your script to life and if you were pleased by their performances.
I was very pleased with everybody's performances. And I think that if your performance in the first cut, before we did post and ADR, everyone's performance got better and everyone I thought was great. So I'm completely happy with all the leads. I think Nolan's great, James is great, Lindsay's great, all very unique actors. I couldn't be more pleased. It turned out so much better than I thought.